Unit 1. It was supposed to be easy, wasn’t it? Discrete random variables, each value, distinct. Defined. To find the expected value of a coin flip, I multiply single-digit numbers together. On the back of the exam there’s some blank space, so I multiply the expected value of being with you, which is the probability of confessing my crush x the value of a crush + the probability of time spent with you x the value of time spent with you. There’s more, but I forget that the first exam is timed. I mistake undefined for infinite.
Unit 2. This unit is on confidence intervals and hypothesis tests, and t-tests and z-tests and p-values but all I can hypothesize about is you. The letters in your name, the curve of your earrings, the shade of your eyes, the estimate of the time before you laugh at my jokes, the distribution of hours a week a college student ought to spend on class and clubs and job and sleep and eating and loving (I search this up on Google). I learn that there is no 100% confidence interval because no one can ever be 100% certain, but, that evening on a walk outside, I slip my fingers in yours. I marvel at how even moonlight leaves our clasped hands whole as one shadow, or 100%, and I want to say, I am certain. I am certain.
Unit 3. For the final project, I create a model to predict outcomes. The model is terrible. The dataset is good. I am desperate now, tattooing every β0 and β1 on my body like ink could move on its own. Form some shape I can describe or explain, allow me to receive an A in this course, drip across the hollow cavities of my body and fill them with numbers. The model isn’t linear or quadratic, and no matter how I equate apologies as solutions, I do not know how to narrate what I see. I watch the rows of values I’d organized on my screen dissolve into clusters of loose specks, white dwarf stars quiet before their explosions. The process is slow, steady, and inevitable. I wait.
Unit 4. There is no explosion. My prediction does not come to pass. The formula of us also proves to be incorrect. I pass the course, regardless. I think of the first day of class, my professor declaring that statistics is a field of assumptions and inferences. I marvel at the probability that I could have been so absolutely wrong, and I declare a minor in statistics.
